"Celts revere Zeus, and the Celtic image of Zeus is a tall oak. The Paeonians revere the Sun, and the Paeonian image of the Sun is a small disc at the top of a long pole. The Arabians revere a god, but which god I know not; their image, which I have seen, was a square stone. Among the Paphians it is Aphrodite who is honoured; their image is like nothing so much as a white pyramid, of an unknown material. Among the Lycians Mount Olympus gives out a fire which is not like the fire of Aetna, but calm and controlled, and it is this fire that serves them as their shrine and image. The Phrygians who live about Celaenae honour two rivers, the Marsyas and the Maeander... The Cappadocians have a mountain as their divinity and sacrament and image, the Maeotae a lake and the Massagetae the river Tanais. What a mass and what a diversity of images! Some are brought into being by human skill, some have won affection for their usefulness, some have won honour for the benefits they conferred, some have won admiration for their capacity to astound, some were divinized because of their size, and some have won praise for their beauty. But no race, Greek or foreign, seafaring or landsmen, nomadic or urban, can bring itself to dispense with establishing some kind of symbols for the honour they pay their gods. How then should one resolve our question, whether one ought to make images of the gods or not? If we were legislating for some other foreign race of men who lived beyond our climes and had just recently grown out of the earth/' or been moulded by some Prometheus, and had no experience of life and law and reason, we might then need to consider whether this race should be left with its natural images, bowing down before not ivory or gold, nor oak or cedar, nor rivers or birds, but the rising sun and the shining moon and the spangled heavens, and pure earth and pure air, and the elements of fire and water all together - or whether instead we were going to confine them too and compel them to pay their honours through shapes of wood and stone. But if this latter is in fact the shared custom of all mankind, then let us leave established practice undisturbed, accepting the stories told of the gods and preserving their symbols as carefully as we do their names. For God, Father and Creator of all that exists, is greater than the Sun and the heavens, mightier than time and eternity and the whole flux of Nature; legislators cannot name him, tongues cannot speak of him, and eyes cannot see him. Unable to grasp his essence we seek the support of sounds and names and creatures, and shapes of gold and ivory and silver, and plants and rivers and peaks and streams; though desiring to understand him, we are forced by our own weakness to name merely terrestrial beauties after his divine nature. We are like lovers, for whom the sweetest thing of all is the sight of the loved one's form, but who also find pleasure in the recollections stirred by a lyre and a javelin or a seat or a racetrack, or in general by anything that arouses memories of our beloved. What point is there in my continuing to enquire into this topic of images and to lay down the law about it? Let men know the race of the gods, let them only know it is the art of Phidias that arouses recollections of God for the Greeks, while for the Egyptians it is the worship of animals, and a river or fire for others, I have no objection to such diversity. Let them only know God, love him, and recollect him!"
Maximus of Tyre, Oration 3:20-32
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